f-confidence, and self-possession always
come with complete understanding. Therefore, these timid, bashful ones may
find, and many of them have found, greater social ease through a knowledge
of themselves and of others, gained through a study of character analysis.

LOVE AND MARRIAGE

We shall probably not be disputed when we state that, aside from religion,
at least, the most momentous problem in the life of every man and woman is
that of love and marriage.

Says Edward Carpenter: "That there should exist one other person in the
world toward whom all openness of interchange should establish itself,
from whom there should be no concealment; whose body should be as dear to
one, in every part, as one's own; with whom there should be no sense of
Mine or Thine, in property or possession; into whose mind one's thoughts
should naturally flow, as it were, to know themselves and to receive a new
illumination; and between whom and one's self there should be a
spontaneous rebound of sympathy in all the joys and sorrows and
experiences of life; such is, perhaps, one of the dearest wishes of the
soul. For such a union Love must lay the foundation, but patience and
gentle consideration and self-control must work unremittingly to perfect
the structure. At length, each lover comes to know the complexion of the
other's mind; the wants, bodily and mental; the needs; the regrets; the
satisfactions of the other, almost as his or her own--and without
prejudice in favor of self rather than in favor of the other; above all,
both parties come to know, in course of time, and after, perhaps, some
doubts and trials, that the great want, the great need, which holds them
together is not going to fade away into thin air, but is going to become
stronger and more indefeasible as the years go on. There falls a sweet, an
irresistible trust over their relation to each other, which consecrates,
as it were, the double life, making both feel that nothing can now divide;
and robbing each of all desire to remain when death has, indeed (or at
least in outer semblance) removed the other.

"So perfect and gracious a union--even if not always realized--is still, I
say, the bona fide desire of most of those who have ever thought about
such matters."

A HEAVEN ON EARTH

In such a union as the author quoted has here described men and women find
life's deepest and truest joys and satisfactions. In it there is solace
for every sorrow, balm for every wound, re